In the past, it has been the conventional practice to employ slide members on the underside of a drawer for slidably engaging a channel so that the drawer may be pulled or drawn easily from its storage cavity in a cabinet. Although a variety of slides are known for movably supporting a drawer on a channel, problems have been encountered which stem largely from the fact that the drawer is not supported firmly enough to prevent lateral displacement, or tilting, during movement of the drawer. Also, prior art drawer slides sometimes take the form of a number of components which must be separately and carefully installed in order to obtain the designed alignment and registry between cooperating members. Such a multiplicity of component parts is expensive to manufacture and difficult to assemble and install.
Other known drawer slides extend the full length of the drawer and have special molded components at each end thereof; accordingly, they must be specially made to fit each of the many different drawer lengths. With the cost of injection molds running in the order of several thousand dollars per mold, such previously proposed full length drawer slides are totally impractical and have never come into widespread use.
Therefore, there has been a longstanding need to provide a simple universal slide for drawers which is formed in one piece, and which is simply and inexpensively installed, and which positively prevents wobble or lateral misalignment of the drawer.
In the field of furniture drawers, the drawer back, as well as the sides, are normally recessed by a "dado" blade, or the like, and the relatively thin bottom of the drawer is normally secured in this recess. In the case of drawer slides for this type of cabinet drawer, it is undesirable to cut away the lower rear edge of the drawer to a substantial extent, as this would be relatively costly, and reduce the strength of the drawer. Accordingly, another object of the present invention is to provide a universal drawer slide for furniture-type drawers having recessed drawer backs in which the drawer bottom is secured.